The New York Times has an interesting feature. They put together a focus group that consisted of seven Trump voters and six Biden voters and invited them to discuss various political issues.
They were all middle aged to elderly (38-65). Their incomes are not actually mentioned in the article but, based on the claimed jobs, they were all employed and may have been in the middle of income earners. They are fairly representative of the registered voters from the standpoint of race and ethnicity. They were apparently pre-screened by agreeing with the proposition that they were “mad as hell and not going to take it any more”. At times the conversation seems to have become quite heated. They actually agreed on a number of things.
The one thing about which there was the most agreement is that only one person wanted Joe Biden to run again in 2024 and that individual thought he wouldn’t.
Another issue on which there was substantial agreement is that they think that “America is broken”.
Both of the black participants think that America is a racist country. One of them thinks that America needs to be “torn down from the ground up” and started over.
I can only hope that such sentiments remain as sentiments.
The assumption that remaking or fixing the country will result in an end state that will be better than the status quo is foolish. Once you open that box, the end result cannot be pre-determined or controlled.
Worse than that, it’s foolish for blacks. I have lived and worked in quite a number of countries. All of them were more racist than the U. S. If they think otherwise they have been cruelly misled.
Whatever America’s problems the woman is better off in the United States than she would be in Ghana. Or France for that matter. In France the problems are intractable by law. Regardless of race everyone is French and it’s illegal to record or keep track of race. The problem is that some of the French are more equal than others.
I was going to mention that but decided against it. African Americans make up 13% of the population – any reordering of society or our system of governance is unlikely to prioritize their particular needs or desires, much less those of one individual (since the black demographic in the US is actually quite diverse).
And I agree with you that the US is objectively one of the least-racist countries on the planet.
I haven’t been to every country but I have been to the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, and Mexico. (others, too) I’ve lived and worked in most of them. They’re all more racist than the U. S.
Those countries are nothing compared to Japan, Korea, Russia and the Gulf States. I haven’t been to China, but have two relatives who lived their long term and say it’s as bad or worse than Korea and Japan.
Then you have all the places with extreme religious or other types of bigotry, like South Asia, much of the Middle East and parts of Africa.
You wouldn’t know if from listening to parts of the progressive left, but the US is one of the most comparatively tolerant societies on a host of measures.
And that’s not even considering gender and sexual norms…
It was true of Saudi Arabia in spades. Not sure I spent enough time in Korea or Japan to have a valid opinion but true among some of them I know living here. I think there is difference in that they are pretty open about it. In the US we pretend it doesnt exist and talk about freedom and equality. Daughter now in China and her initial experience is pretty good so far.
Steve